Jefferson Navicky
Encounter in Orange

My dog and I looped the forest in the wet morning
shooshing leaves, scuffled along through
good smells half asleep. She was not
half asleep - afoot on everything, straining
leash over creek and creek and the rusted
car or whatever it is or was, left
on this old road, tired of being a road, but a road
must always be a road, and this one lead us back
                                                                              to owl.

I thought the flap and feathered spread
at first some mottled fish unleashed
upon the limbs above my head, I thought
the forest sliced, some sharp hook set for my face,
such a slow fast tear sent me low.
My dog barked, lunged, pointed at the perched
bird beyond us, twenty feet or so. So
close, so high, so much. We watched
the limb, the tree, the forest where owl,
back to us, sat like some other world watcher,
like a loaf of bread on end, silent
above us, pliant and neck spun,
neck ruffled, really really, I remembered
the dead one I found on the river bed.
I turned her over on her back,
eyes closed as napping - was I making this up? -
I remembered eye lashes. That can't be right,
her soul just beyond that flap of sash.

Orange felt white. Owl dropped down
to forest floor death floor quiet, took something
that belonged to her. I thanked her
for her theft. I wrote the loss on leaves.
I burned the trees to make this poem.

Storm Chasers

The hurricane spit white water and a wicked wind
that seemed like the brutal friend I needed.
We waited for it to come ashore huddled together
and hiding around the corner of the hotel, watching
with a gallon of wine, the cork shoved down into the bottle,
but it ceased to be romantic when the roof
of the hotel ripped off and rolled like the top
of a sardine tin. We made for your station wagon
big as a tank, but barely, thankfully, we made it out
on the last road off the Cape. You dropped me
at a gas station in Lynn. I said I had to pee and call
my boyfriend. I knew you wouldn't like that,
even though it wasn't true, so I wasn't surprised you
were gone when I came back out. A relief
to see you go, and I know you won't remember
my name just like I won't remember yours.

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